Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury

In 1963, Faust traveled across West and East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia with six other high school students and two group leaders. Faust was 15 years old and the group’s youngest member. The trip began with a week of orientation in West Germany, where they met local high school students and learned about East-West politics. Shortly after their arrival, President Kennedy delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in West Berlin, arguing that anyone who believed compromise was possible with the Communists should come to Berlin and see the violence and oppression for themselves.

Faust was nervous “about coming face-to-face with communism” (184). In West Germany, many tried to warn them that their mission of building “peaceful ties” in East Germany was “naïve and even dangerous” (184). Faust and the rest of the group were frightened by their warnings, but the stories also seemed implausible, and they had trouble believing they would have problems. They felt their “greater objectivity” would allow them to “penetrate the abstractions of communism” and contribute to “reconciliation and peace” (184-5). Faust admits that this line of thinking was naïve; in reality, East Germany was full of secret spies and informers.

While Faust was nervous about “crossing the frontier of the Free World” (185), she had many other new experiences on the trip.